Chasing The Devil: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene

In 2004, journalist Butcher (Blood River) made a journey through the Congo, following a trail blazed by the 19th-century adventurer and author Henry Morton Stanley and tracing the evolution of a region and its people. Several years later, he contemplated another journey through African regions whose political instabilities he had been covering. This time Butcher used Graham Greene's little-known 1935 travel book, Journey Without Maps, as his guide on the 350-mile trek from Freetown, on the coast of Sierra Leone, to the coast of Liberia. Greene's route took Butcher through the remote backcountry of both countries and brought him into contact with the people living there. Butcher weaves reflections on Greene's writing through his own reflections on the ways that each region has changed in the intervening decades. He compares the shabby and seedy Freetown, in spite of its well-maintained buildings, in Greene's Heart of the Matter, to what he sees as the city's current systemic post-war corruption, flat-lining economy, and beachfront swarmed by prostitutes. Through his captivating storytelling, Butcher leads readers along through the dangers and the exhilarations of this trip, and we learn with him the value of taking time to savor the true smell and taste of a place. (Sept.)